Hard lessons and good fortune made Marc Marquez MotoGP’s big winner at Le Mans

Seldom do we see days quite like Sunday at the 2025 MotoGP French Grand Prix, which kept everyone guessing right from the moment pitlane opened for the first sighting lap down to who would take the chequered flag first.

An aborted start as rain led an entire slick-shod field into pitlane at the end of the warm-up lap led to a restart when conditions were seemingly too dry for wets. Thirteen riders swallowed a double long lap penalty to change to slicks at the end of the second sighting lap. Chaos erupted at the start as bruised title hopeful Pecco Bagnaia was taken down in a collision triggered by Enea Bastianini.

Then the rain returned, polesitter Fabio Quartararo crashed out, those on slicks returned eventually to pitlane for the wet tyres they’d discarded for the restart. And through it all, Johann Zarco stormed his way to an unlikely second career victory and first for Honda to do something no Frenchman has done on home soil since 1954.

Problems for title challengers played into Marc Marquez’s hands, as he cautiously rode the conditions to an important runner-up spot that puts him back in control of the world standings by 22 points.

Both riders were dealt good fortune in different ways to help their results along, but there is no doubting that Zarco earned his home victory - on his mother’s first visit to a grand prix - through a brilliant strategic call on the part of his LCR team.

In a long, winding 22-round championship, it’s easy for race weekends to blend into one, in some cases lose their impact. But this year’s French GP will forever remain isolated in its own little sporting moment in time: the day the rain came, and through all the chaos, in front of a record crowd, Le Marseillaise rang out around Le Mans for the first time ever in the premier class.

The Jerez lesson weighs heavy on Marc Marquez’s mind at the French GP

Before the rain came on Sunday, the rest of the French GP weekend ran to normal conditions. And from the off, Marc Marquez was in imperious form. He set his best time of FP1 on a 20-lap-old medium rear tyre, then smashed the lap record in Practice as he put an updated Ducati chassis through its paces.

Strong race pace pretty much had every rider fixing their attentions on a battle for second come Sunday, if it remained dry.

Marquez dismissed a lot of this though, in some ways looking nervous about it. He repeatedly pointed to the fact he was favourite for victory at COTA and Jerez when he crashed while in strong positions.

The latter seems to have impacted him more. After winning the sprint, maintaining his 100% Saturday race record in 2025, he noted that his Jerez crash led him to be more patient when polesitter Fabio Quartararo led in the first five laps before making his decisive move on the sixth tour.

All eyes were on Marquez prior to the start of the grand prix as the rain came down. The start chaos he triggered in Austin led to a rule tweak: anyone coming off the grid to change tyres and take the warm-up lap from pitlane would get a double long lap penalty. Everyone headed off the grid on slicks, but tip-toed their way around and all came in at the end of the warm-up lap.

By the time the delayed start had been reset, it was dry enough for some to go back to slicks. Marquez was one of 13 to do so at the end of the sighting lap, along with Quartararo, Maverick Vinales, Fabio Di Giannantonio, Fermin Aldeguer, Ai Ogura, Pedro Acosta, Joan Mir, Brad Binder, Raul Fernandez, Enea Bastianini, Franco Morbidelli and Alex Marquez.

They all copped double long lap penalties, but in the first laps it looked like the correct decision. If the rain stayed away, the other 12 riders on wets would have pit again. The time lost for a long lap - three seconds, according to pre-race notes from the FIM stewards - far exceeded the 30-plus seconds a bike swap required.

Marc Marquez ran second behind Quartararo on the first two laps, and was passed by Alex Marquez on the following tour. Aldeguer demoted him further on lap four, showing the cautious approach Marquez was taking. Both of his long laps were served by lap seven, when he sat second behind Aldeguer and came into pitlane to change bikes.

Marquez was two tenths quicker than Zarco, who’d started on wets and took the lead on lap eight, on the eighth tour but couldn’t really do anything to substantially wipe out the LCR Honda rider’s pace.

“The fact that I did a mistake in Jerez avoided the mistake today, because if not, if I came from a victory from Jerez I’m 80% sure I would crash today because I know myself,” he admitted afterwards.

In some ways, there were shades of the 2016 Dutch TT at Assen. A wet race then, Marquez’s title rivals all encountered difficult afternoons and he elected against much of a fight when a charging Jack Miller on a Marc VDS Honda came steaming up behind him.

On Sunday at Le Mans, Pecco Bagnaia was taken down in a collision to register his first pointless weekend of the season to slip 51 adrift in the standings. Alex Marquez, erstwhile championship leader, crashed twice in the grand prix to also come away from Sunday without points. In the end, Marc Marquez didn’t need to force the issue with Zarco, who isn’t realistically a title contender.

As well as the fortune of his title rivals struggling, the freshness of Fermin Aldeguer helped him a lot. The 20-year-old was ahead of Marquez when the factory Ducati rider boxed. Aldeguer had inherited the lead because Marc Marquez had taken his second long lap, while Alex Marquez merely made a mistake and ran wide.

While the rookie would brilliantly rebound to third, that extra lap on slicks was a reprieve for Marc Marquez because Aldeguer’s average pace was 1m47.055s on wets compared to 1m47.114s for the championship leader. With a rookie all over him, Marquez more than likely would have erred on the side of caution and lost four more points.

Calling it a day to “limit the damage”, Marquez is riding with his head again and that will be a problem for the rest to deal with in the coming rounds.

Zarco strategy masterclass allows Honda to keep a long-held record

There are those who argue that flag-to-flag race artificially inject drama into a race, that they are - in fact - not really races at all. What can’t be denied is that LCR and Johann Zarco got their strategy spot on.

Coming into Sunday, nothing was really going for Zarco. He hasn’t been as comfortable on the Honda since MotoGP got to Europe and he came away from the sprint with a sixth-place finish, which wasn’t bad - but not really what he was hoping for.

Without the intervention of the weather, a dream first French victory on home soil since Pierre Monneret at Reims in 1954 really wasn’t on the cards. During the aborted start, LCR kept monitoring the weather radar - multiple weather radars, in fact - and was “absolutely convinced”, so says team boss Lucio Cecchinello, starting on wets was the right thing to do.

Zarco heeded this advice and was one of four riders who’d started on wets still on the tyre as the rain started to fall heavier on lap four. Miller, just as we was at Assen in 2016, was arguably the better placed to capitalise as he was the leading wet runner when pitstops started to happen before he crashed out.

Thus, Zarco found himself in the box seat and was at the front, to the delight of the home crowd, as of the start of lap eight. Almost eight seconds clear at this point, his lead would swell to over 20 seconds before taking the chequered flag 19.907s clear of Marc Marquez.

While the team helped him out with his wet tyre strategy, Zarco’s decision to approach the start the way he did almost ended his race on the first lap. Electing against using ride height devices because he wasn’t sure he could generate enough speed to be able to disengage them on the brakes, he tumbled backwards from 11th and was tagged by Joan Mir in the collision involving Bastianini and Bagnaia.

Ending lap one down in 17th, luck was with Zarco and he made sure to not let it go to waste. When everyone had switched to wets, Zarco’s pace was breathtaking - at times he was a second a lap quicker than Marc Marquez.

His victory not only made French history, but it ended a win drought for Honda dating back to Austin 2023 when (ironically) LCR rider Alex Rins was victorious. It also ends Ducati’s unbeaten run of 22 consecutive grand prix victories, ensuring that - for another year at least - it remains level with Honda on this record.

It also comes at a time when Zarco is trying to convince Honda to promote him to its factory team in place of Luca Marini, who is out of contract at the end of the year. Zarco has repeatedly been Honda’s top rider since he joined the marque last year. Frankly, he’s already done enough to warrant the step - this victory is merely a reminder for HRC of his quality.

Luckless Le Mans the nadir of Pecco Bagnaia’s 2025 season

The first double non-score in the sprint era for Pecco Bagnaia is a grim way to signal the fact his 2025 season has already hit its nadir.

Bagnaia came into the French GP off the back of his best start to a season in terms of points and hadn’t not scored in either sprint or main race at any of the first five rounds. Despite not having the same speed as Marc Marquez or Alex Marquez, he was still very much in striking distance - a good launch pad for when things do start to go right.

That was hoped to be at the Jerez test after the Spanish GP, but Bagnaia told the media on Friday at Le Mans that the 2025 Ducati simply does not have what he needs to be strong on the front end. And therefore, he is the one who has to adapt - not the bike.

It was an honest admission that deserves some credit, even if it essentially resets his season six rounds in. Without great pace in qualifying, he was sixth on the grid but looked well up for a podium in the sprint before crashing on lap two while running fourth. He said afterwards that, without the feeling he still hasn’t found on the front end, these things are bound to happen.

His grand prix effectively ended at the same place, as Bastianini climbed the kerb in an ambitiously shoddy overtaking attempt that wiped out Bagnaia and fractured Joan Mir’s right hand.

Bagnaia remounted and was a lapped 16th in the end. Cruelly for him, he was one of the few to start on wet tyres and would have been released into a podium spot when the slick runners pitted.

It’s hard to tell where he would have gotten to had this come to pass. His pace analysis puts him around a 1m47.907s (with blue flag laps discounted), which was eight tenths away from the pace of Marc Marquez and Aldeguer. And he admitted his lack of front feeling was worse in the wet.

But Bagnaia did also win MotoGP’s last wet race prior to France, last year in Thailand. Ifs and buts in the end, though Bagnaia deserved more than what he got on Sunday at Le Mans.

Now 51 points down on team-mate Marquez in third in the standings, Bagnaia’s title hopes are looking harder and harder to keep alive. He isn’t finding what he wants from the Ducati, and at present is not able to adapt. And when he earned a bit of luck for making the right strategic call when his main title rivals didn’t, he got a slap in the face.

Ducati has on its hands a deflated and confidence-knocked double world champion. How it navigates him through the next few weeks, at tracks like Silverstone, Aragon, Mugello and Assen, where he has been so strong at in the past, will determine whether or not his season can be saved…